Many entities use data centers for multiple purposes. Service providers, such as phone companies, cable networks, power companies, retailers, etc., store and access customers' data in larger ‘server farms,’ or data centers. For purposes of discussion here, ‘data center’ means a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. A data center generally includes not just the computer systems, but back up power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls such as air conditioning and fire suppression, and security systems and devices.
Data center operations generally revolve around customer service levels. For example, a particular customer may have an agreement to have a particular quality of service for that customer's computations or data communications. The quality of service (QoS) may have different requirements for different customers. For example, for one customer, the key measure of the quality of service may involve how fast an application responds when accessed remotely. For another customer, the quality of service may involve the speed or bandwidth of connections provided to that customer's subscriber.
Data center operations managers will generally optimize and manage the loading of tasks and processing based upon meeting the defined QoS requirements for the manager's customers. The manager may distribute processing task, etc., in response to changing customer requirements over time and conditions that relate to the processing load. The manager does not generally take into account the impact on energy consumption of the various customer requirements, nor does the manager take into account the ‘true cost’ of operations for a particular customer.
For example, a customer may have a particular quality of service requirement that generally results in several high-load processes running on several different servers during a limited time every day with high priority. During other times, the quality of service requirement may taper off to a minimal processing requirement. That customer's service level agreement (SLA) would generally have a provision guaranteeing the availability of the processes during the limited time and may charge the customer more.
Contrast this with a customer that has a quality of service requirement that is relatively low, but steady state. The servers are constantly running to meet the customer's requirement, but because the quality of service requirements is relatively low, the customer may be charged less than the previous customer.
This type of business model does not take into account that the second customer's load may actually cost the data center more, because of the constant power requirement. Alternatively, one could find that the second customer does actually result in a lower cost of operations due to the predictable nature of the load. However, without monitoring and taking into account the cost of the energy for the data systems and the necessary supporting systems, such as increased air conditioning needs when many servers are running at high speeds, one will not have data to make these types of decisions.
Further, data centers are becoming an increasing burden on the already strained power and energy resources. Current estimates show the power consumption of data centers to be between 1 and 2 percent of the national consumption. With increasingly more entities relying upon data centers, and the growing population, this number will rise. Some way to make decisions with regard to costs, as well as more efficiently manage the power consumption of data centers would assist in these issues.